


le malaise du moment

by Afueras



Series: the cherry drag [1]
Category: Bandom, Placebo
Genre: Crossdressing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:58:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afueras/pseuds/Afueras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>first in the cherry drag series</p>
            </blockquote>





	le malaise du moment

Cherry was a star. From the moment when the dim house lights went down and her hand first curled around the mike, she was beautiful. The dirty cabaret, with its scent of cigarettes and cheap liquor, couldn’t hold her when she breather her throaty purr into the mike, gyrating her hips in a way that should be obscene but _wasn’t._

I waited offstage, dutiful slave to the force of nature that was Cherry, ready to take up her heels as she slung them off; I would follow her to her dressing room, helplessly swept along by the river of _her._

After a good show, she would fling me a velvety smile, all crimson lips and tiny teeth. She would call me a good boy, and let me help her from her dress, her girdle, her stockings and garters. Her gaff. 

She was never shy.

I remember now, the endless nights when she would simply recline in her dressing room without so much as removing her elbow-length gloves, cigarette dangling limply from slightly parted lips. Her once-perfect eyeliner was smeared down her face, coating her cheeks like fog, mixing with the yellowing smoke of her cigarette.

She only smoked on bad nights, she’d said. Nights when new patrons noticed her too-flat chest and slightly heavy hands.

Her room held the same cigarette smell as the rest of the building, except slightly stale, and steeped in another scent – one of pressed powder and cheap floral perfume, which was entirely Cherry. Her skin was glowed in the dim light from the bare bulbs which arced across the vanity mirror, dark eyes staring at nothing from behind heavy lids, lashes trailing delicate designs across the feminine face. Smoke from her cigarette curled into the heavy air. _Sultry,_ I remember thinking.

“Want a fag?” my head snapped up, mouth hanging open. Cherry was holding out her pack, her expression unreadable.

“My mother says I’m too young.” 

At this, she smiled at me, a lazy curve, which made my stomach turn in a way I didn’t quite understand. “Stay that way.”

That was the first time, in all of my months of working at Rouge, slave to the elusive Cherry who existed only within these walls, that she had spoken to me like an equal. An adult.

One night, a good-show night, as I struggled with the girdle, my lungs filled with brittle tobacco and sweet perfume, and I realized that I loved her.

My hands must have fallen slack for a moment, because suddenly her dusky, kohl-rimmed eyes were fixed directly on mine over her shoulder, exposing the shimmering white curve of her shoulder to my gaze, the skin of her side warm under my hand. Vaguely I wondered what it would taste like, before snapping back to myself. She had asked if I was all right. 

I nodded, and before the words could stick in my throat, blurted “What’s it like to be a homosexual?”

For a moment, she looked surprised, before composing her features into another velvet smile. 

“It’s the disease of the age,” she murmured. I nodded, though I didn’t understand, and began my work again.


End file.
